


And One More Job

by domesticadventures



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Episode: s10e18 Book of the Damned, Gen, Headspace
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-21
Updated: 2015-04-21
Packaged: 2018-03-25 01:56:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3792274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/domesticadventures/pseuds/domesticadventures
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The book doesn’t call to you like it does to Dean.</p>
<p>You don’t know precisely what it is he hears, but you know it’s not like this, not like something straight out of Poe. There’s no mark on your arm drawing you to the book, but your own guilty heart beats so hard in your chest that it may as well be a homing signal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And One More Job

The book doesn’t call to you like it does to Dean.

You don’t know precisely what it is he hears, but you know it’s not like this, not like something straight out of Poe. There’s no mark on your arm drawing you to the book, but your own guilty heart beats so hard in your chest that it may as well be a homing signal.

_Liar, liar, liar,_ the book calls, even though it’s out of the room, down the hall, under your bed. _Lying to your brother again._

It keeps you up at night.

You finally give up sometime around 4am, and when you pull the box up from the floor, for a second you think it’s vibrating with laughter, _ha, no rest for the wicked._

But no, it’s just the shaking of your own hands. Nothing more.

\--

He doesn’t want to die. He doesn’t.

You know this because you know what that feels like and it’s not -- it’s not great. It’s the worst thing you can imagine. You don’t want to imagine your brother feeling like that, even if he does.

You picture him the way he was at dinner: laughing, smiling, not quite happy but close. Closer than either of you has been in a long time. Happy enough that for those few hours it drowned out the memory of the subtle shifts in his facial expressions over the past few weeks, the slow slide towards hopelessness he hasn’t been able to hide.

You know it’s selfish, wanting to keep him here. You, going, that made sense. There are people waiting for you on the other side, Jess and Madison and Sarah and. And. Who’s waiting for Dean? It’s better for you both if he stays, because then at least you have each other. At least you both have someone. Your logic is sound, right. Right?

You say _I can’t do it without my brother_ and try not to think _if I have to stay here, so does he._

Dean can’t want to die. He can’t. He can’t.

\--

You worked at a coffee shop for a while, back in a different time.

It feels so far away, now, so far divorced from your current reality that remembering feels like looking at a version of yourself that lives in an alternate universe. He’s part of a different narrative. He couldn’t have existed on this plane. You’re sure of it.

You worked there during your first couple years at Stanford because you didn’t have the skills to do anything else. You still don’t. You could stop hunting right now and you still wouldn’t be qualified to do anything more than you were when you were nineteen.

It felt good, though, earning your own keep. Spending money that wasn’t from hustling pool or from credit card fraud or from Dean. You spent it responsibly, on healthy food and textbooks and nice clothes, the kind a lawyer would wear because you should always dress for the job you want, not the one you have.

At the job you had, there was a sign that read “Number of days since last accident.” It was laminated so the blank space for the number could be used and reused, so you could press the reset button every time there was a workplace injury. Your boss promised to treat everyone to pizza if you made it a whole month without anyone getting hurt. How laughable that was, the idea that everyone could collectively make it thirty days without a single slip and fall, without cuts and scrapes, without contact burns.

The book is sitting in a box. The box is under your bed, and then the box is in your hands and you’re walking out the door and wiping the slate clean, setting the number of days since you and Dean have hurt each other back to zero.

This is not the life you want.

\--

You track her to a diner, book in its cage on the seat next to you, in your lap, on the table, demanding your attention. You tell yourself you’re not going to look at it, just like you tell yourself this isn’t begging.

“Shall we discuss terms?” she says, because there’s always a price and you’re going to pay it. Dean isn’t going to pay it, isn’t going to make anyone else pay it, but you are.

“You wouldn’t have come to me unless I was your last resort,” she says, and she looks so goddamn smug because it’s the truth and she knows it, you know it, everybody knows it.

You’ve heard this story before, you think. You’ve worked with the enemy before and told yourself it was the right thing to do. Because that’s what she is. The enemy. Not your friend. Not even really the enemy of your enemy. But here she is, and here you are.

This is your life now. This is the life you have. This is it.

 


End file.
